The short version: Male, Salt Lake City, Utah, 32, happily married with an adorable little girl and a bouncing baby boy. I'm originally from Michigan, and am a big Michigan football fan. Graduated from Hope College in Holland, Michigan, got an M.S. a few years later from the University of Utah.

Nowadays I spend my time with my family, and as much time as I can hacking away on personal projects. I spend a fair amount of my free time hacking on Zyzzyva, a program I am writing to help myself study Scrabble words. I spend a fair amount of time playing in Scrabble tournaments and at the Utah Scrabble Club.

These days I'm trying to use Ruby where I would normally use Perl. But I haven't done enough programming with it to get used to it yet, and I find myself using Perl anyway. Heard this funny quote from someone on Slashdot the other day:

Perl is like my ex-girlfriend... I used to be all over her^H^H^Hit but
am now fawning over the knockout redhead Ruby. Unfortunately, I had
several children with my ex that still need to be cared for -- feature
improvements, bugfixes, restarts. Hopefully one day they'll grow up and
leave the house so Ruby can have me all to herself.

I like to participate in the lighter side of programming, so whenever I have time I take part in Perl golf, or write the occasional JAPH. My all-time favorite JAPH is here: Just another JAPH.

Ada Lovelace for the palindrome
Albert Einstein for having smelly feet
Alfred Nobel for his contribution to battlefield science
Burkhard Heim for providing the missing link between science and mysticism
Claude Shannnon for riding a unicycle at night at MIT
Donald Knuth for being such a great organist
Edward Teller for being the template for Dr. Strangelove
Edwin Hubble for pretending to be a pipe-smoking English gentleman
Erwin Schrödinger for cruelty to cats
Hedy Lamarr for weaponizing pianos
Hugh Everett for immortality, especially for cats
Isaac Newton for his occult studies
Kikunae Ikeda for discovering the secrets of soy sauce
Larry Wall for his website
Louis Camille Maillard for discovering why steaks taste good
Marie Curie for the shiny stuff
Nikola Tesla for the cool cars
Paul Dirac for speaking one word per hour when socializing
Richard Feynman for his bongo skills
Robert Oppenheimer for his in-depth knowledge of the Bhagavad Gita
Rusi P Taleyarkhan for Cold Fusion
Sigmund Freud for his Ménage ā trois
Theodor W Adorno for his contribution to the reception of jazz
Wilhelm Röntgen for the foundations of body scanners
Yulii Borisovich Khariton for the Tsar Bomba
Other (please explain why)